


but then friendship consists in forgetting

by philthestone



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Anne and Constance's friendship is precious to me, Gen, Personally I love sadness, Set between s2 and 3, aaaarguably passes the bechel test? i tried my best folks, also -- i have no idea who found the codTM again but it's THERE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 12:09:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10786479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: "I have many friends," she tells Rochefort, and pretends that despite everything, there is not a small thrill of warmth that runs through her chest at the knowledge that she can truthfully make such a claim.





	but then friendship consists in forgetting

**Author's Note:**

> my heart breaks for anne every time she says the word "friends" because she always sounds as though she is secretly bursting with joy at the ability to claim she has friends and truthfully that is SO SAD. this fic is set between seasons 2 and 3 and i have really tried my best to catch all the details, because i don't think anne's state of mind is ever .... straightforward, or simple. she has to deal with _everything_ , out of necessity, and so she wouldn't like ... neglect considering things, even in her own depressed internal monologue.
> 
> title is me paraphrasing dumas -- hes got some of the best quotes, rly, i dont know how else to put it other than "they are all so lit"
> 
> reviews are Happy Endings thanks

_Friendship_ has always been an interesting word to Anne.

It hangs above her like a phantom without an anchor – floating, sort of, as though it is unsure as to whether or not it belongs in her presence.

She is not entirely certain that she knew what friendship meant, as a child. Now, more than ever, she doubts. She _doubts,_ because that is not something she has ever had the privilege to do before, and she wonders if now that she has broken one rule she must break them all, but she _doubts_.

She doubts the gentle amicability, the childish laughter exchanged, the careful nods and flat silences. He memory is unreliable, a diaphanous entity, blurring into itself in her mind. She does not know now, if the way her sister had held her hand at ten years old in the gardens in Spain had been _friendship_. She is not sure, whether her brother’s soft goodbye at thirteen, the last time she was to see him in a long time, was _friendship_. She is uncertain, so uncertain, whether or not she and Louis were ever _friends_. She thinks, more and more, that the polite smiles of her ladies in waiting, at the age of sixteen, twenty, twenty-three, was not friendship.

She does not think about Rochefort.

They leave mere days after Louis appoints Captain Treville as Minister of War. It is necessary, Anne tells herself. It is loyalty, she knows. It is duty, she feels, deeply, in the bones she carries under her silks and lace, the bones that more and more she wants to cry are hardening to iron under duress. She feels an ache in her heart, because of many things, but she blames it upon the thought of fighting her brother and wonders if it is because she truly misses him, or if it is because she misses the memory of him, or if it is simply the principle of the thing. Was her brother her friend? Was he her brother, _truly_? Ties of blood are different from brotherhood, Anne knows now, though she herself is no one’s brother. Siblinghood, then, perhaps. That is another word that Anne considers, now, in the quiet moments. Constance understands this, better than most, and Constance has not left. Anne holds tightly onto her son as often as she can, and grips Constance’s hand in times between, and in the mornings and the evenings, she kneels down by her bed as she did as a little girl and prays.

She prays for her son, and for Constance, and for France, and she prays for the King. She thinks of everything that has happened, and everything that is happening, and she prays.

She thanks God, in her prayers. She spends fleeting moments unsure as to whether or not she deserved his intervention, whether or not she has tricked herself into thinking that her sins are forgivable – whether or not she ever deserved the loyalty of her friends.

They are not here any longer, but gone. Constance remains, and Anne takes deep breaths and brushes away the soft hair on her son’s head and smiles at her _friend_ , for she, Constance, has far more to hurt for than Anne does, and Anne cannot allow her own troubles to overshadow those of Constance. Her husband is gone; Anne’s remains right here, doting on Anne’s son. 

Constance is a friend. Anne knows this, because Constance lets Anne offer support and care and help, and yet she stops, every so often, and asks Anne if _she,_ in turn, is alright.

Anne _knows_ , now. She did not know before, and perhaps the part of her that was undeserving of God’s intervention is paying for it now, because she didn’t know, and now she knows, and they are gone.

Constance is a friend. Anne tries to keep her as occupied as she can, lest her strength be chipped at until her face becomes pale and drawn, as Anne knows sometimes happens. Anne has always had powders and silks and perfumes to hide the paleness. Constance does not have these things, and Constance is her _friend_ , and Anne lets her play with the Dauphin and confess as many fears as she feels comfortable, and grips her hand when she is frightened.

War is a frightening thing, and her friends are gone.

( _He_ is gone even earlier than they, and Anne cannot help but think about him, more than anyone else.)

**

The months drag on, and the emptiness echoes in corridors and royal audiences and the cobbled pathways of the gardens. It feels, trickling into her consciousness like ice, that there is no longer any _warmth_ to be exchanged in the quiet moments. 

The quiet moments become more and more cold, and the Louvre becomes more and more like a cage, and Anne feels the ache more and more keenly. At first, she fears it is not her ache to feel – that it is unfair, for her to miss something she barely knew. Not when others have lost so much more, not when she still has so much.

Reports come in of deaths, of loss, of people _gone, gone, gone_. Villagers are being displaced, Constance says quietly, sitting on the edge of Anne’s bed and stilling in her needlework. Treville says that they are making progress, in some regions, and sustaining heavy losses in others. Anne does not know what _progress_ means when discussing war, but Constance’s face has creased, her eyebrows tight under her curling bangs, and Anne reaches out and takes her hand.

“There’s rumours of an oncoming food shortage,” Constance starts, and then stops and bites her lip. “I don’t – I can’t bare to think of it. But there must be some way we can stop it before it happens.”

“I can talk to the King,” says Anne, even as her eyes fall down to the lavish carpet on the floor. She thinks that perhaps she is not as good at hiding her heart as she was before, because Louis has more than once commented upon her morose attitude. _You have suffered an ordeal, I suppose_ , he had said at first, all those months ago. And then, _perhaps you are simply unwell? Would you like to retire?_

 _We are at war_ , she had said, quietly, the most recent time he’d questioned her, and her heart had stuttered a moment after she said it. Questions of loyalty seem so easily brought up, now, in a way that they did not before.

“Yes,” her husband had sighed, flippant. “I suppose we are. And you’ve always been so uninteresting when it comes to these sorts of things, haven’t you.”

Anne had beared it in silence. Somehow, her silence feels worse now than it did before; it’s intermingled with a fear that Anne did not know existed. 

She looks up at Constance, who is smiling at her, a little bit sadly.

“I had a letter from d’Artagnan, two days ago,” Constance says.

“You had!” Anne takes both her hands in hers, now, a smile of her own filing her face involuntarily. “Oh, Constance, I am –” She pauses – “you seem glad about it, Constance, so I take it things are well.”

“I’m very relieved,” says Constance, the end of her sentence breaking off in a huff of laughter, the kind that is a weak imitation of the real thing. “He’s alright. Doesn’t say much about the war itself, but I think – it’s hard, I suppose. But then, they’re trained for it, aren’t they.”

“Yes,” says Anne, quietly. “I suppose they are.”

“Porthos wrote last week,” adds Constance. “He had much the same to say, though –” She pauses. “He asked about you, your Majesty.”

Anne looks up, head very nearly jerking in an unbecoming way. She is surprised, in a way that she cannot say she has been very often before, and something bittersweet fills her chest. 

“Oh?” she says.

Constance smiles again, that same small, sad thing.

“Yes. What shall I tell him, then? How are you?”

Anne opens her mouth, and it seems the words get caught. In the other room, little Louis is playing with his governess, another young woman who has come into Anne’s employ with innocence and obedience trailing after her; Anne tries to smile at her as often as she can, and thinks of her in her prayers, and refuses to let the twinge in her heart choke her. Outside the open window, birds call in the gardens. Her son is nearly three years old, now, already with a quick-coming, heedless laugh and sparkling brown eyes, and Anne’s heart freezes in her chest whenever the King looks at him.

In the mornings and the evenings, Anne kneels at the foot of her bed like the did as a little girl, and prays. She prays for her son, and for Constance, and for France, and she prays for the King. She adds a few prayers: for Marguerite, for Doctor Lemay, for her brother the king, and for her friends. They are her friends, because she knows friendship, now, and feels its loss keenly. Even in her prayers, there is an empty space where there wasn’t before.

 _Before_. That is also an interesting word.

“I am alright,” she says, at length. “And I hope that he is well. I mean – as well as can be expected, of course.”

She’s not sure if she meant to apply the statement to one or all of them, and then wonders at her use of _all of them_.

All of whom?

Constance nods, and shifts her grip on Anne’s hands, and they remain seated that way for some time.

**

Treville has started smiling at her across rooms, whenever he is able it seems, and that is some small comfort, at least. Anne does not allow herself to dwell upon what is being comforted; Treville's smiles are meant to be gentle reassurance that the quiet moments are not as empty as she might have thought them. He means well, Anne knows, but somehow, his efforts only magnify the missing pieces of the puzzle, as thought the canopy that had built up around Anne since Easter -- _years_ ago, now -- is missing all but two of its many pegs. 

She does not sway in the wind, though, but stands taller and more erect than ever, and allows herself a smile at the increasing grey in the poor Minister's beard. _The poor soul,_ says Constance, the beginning of the first joke they have made in what seems like an age. They are not as rusty as Anne might have thought them. _To think he's spent all these years dealing with the boys without a single speck of grey, and three years of war have him looking older than his years_.

Anne nearly smiles at the inflection in Constance's voice at _the boys_ , as though the hardened soldiers with whom she'd adventured were somehow also knobbly-kneed youths that Constance had some claim over. Anne nearly smiles, because perhaps that is true, and then bites at the inside of her cheek -- is she allowed similar claims, she wonders? They are all missing tent pegs, either way.

She does not mean to be holding onto it when Louis walks into the room. She does not mean it, as she has not meant so many other things, but then, they all happened too, did they not?

Her son is on the floor, playing with toy soldiers, as though war is merely a game in his nursery. He has no idea of it, no concept, Anne knows, and merely thinks the toys to be prettily carved, despite Louis’s insistence that he is a fearsome general leading great armies across the nursery floor. 

(There is a small, traitorous part of her that thinks her son would not learn to see war as so _trivial_ , to treat it without the respect and wariness it deserved, if only –)

(She does not finish this thought. She cannot.)

She does not mean to be holding onto it, but she had found it amongst her other jewelry only that morning, and she had forgotten, it seemed, to unwind it from around her fingers, to slip the long gold chain and small ornate pendant into the farthest corner of her dressing table drawer, where it belonged. 

The King smiles at her son, and kneels down on the floor to push around the toys with him, and when he looks up, his eyes catch on the crucifix in Anne’s hands.

Anne lets her thumb still against the center of the cross, and smiles at him.

“You are feeling better today, Anne?”

“I’m quite fine, Louis,” she says, “thank you.”

“Yes.” He frowns, tiny and fleeting – nearly invisible. “Yes – I’m glad, my dear.”

Anne nods, and curling her fingers tightly around the necklace, such that the gold digs into her palm. Her son runs over to her, holding aloft his favorite piece – the horseman, a tall, carved wooden figure astride a gallant steed -- his round cheeks dimpling.

“Look, Mama, look!”

In the mornings and the evenings, Anne kneels at the foot of her bed like the did as a little girl, and prays. She prays for her son, and for Constance, and for France, and for Spain, and she prays for the King.

She prays for the soldiers fighting in the war, because she aches for them to be able to see their own sons grow like this, and to teach those sons that respect and wariness that Anne knows they feel, more deeply than she can imagine.

“That’s wonderful, my darling,” she says, and does not notice Louis’s lingering frown as he leaves the room a half hour later.

**

The ache grows, and although she has gotten better at hiding it, with it grows Louis’s coldness. She is not sure what it is that started it, but more and more he is distant, flippant, dismissive. She should be used to it, she thinks, she should be prepared – she survived it when his mother was still Regent; she survived it on the erratic sprinkling of days where his mood was suddenly changed. She survived Milady, after all.

This, however, is not a fleeting fancy, but a steady, growing thing, and Anne feels the ache intwine itself with Louis’s behaviour and overwhelm her chest when she is alone at night. 

She is not only alone at night, now – this is a thought that passes through her head more than once. Constance has started to go back into the city more and more often, to visit the Garrison and help Minister Treville manage things. She has a head for it, and the experience, Anne knows, and there is no part of her that begrudges her _friend_ the responsibility. This is not duty, Anne thinks, but a drive, a pull, a _need_ to _help_. She can understand this, she thinks, though she rarely has the opportunity to express it. Constance’s sad smiles turn to determined ones, and her grip, which has always been firm on Anne’s hand, becomes firmer. 

Anne watches her son grow older, watches his soft downy curls refuse to stay put, watches the sweetness in his face and the way his little mouth tilts when he grins at her. Louis still dotes on him, but always turns his back to Anne when doing so, and Anne doubts.

In the mornings and the evenings, Anne kneels at the foot of her bed like the did as a little girl, and prays. She prays for her son, and for Constance, and for France, and for Spain, and she prays for the King. That is her duty, she knows.

It is not her duty to pray for her friends, but she does anyway, and grips her rosary with whitening fingers. News from the front is still the same, and Constance cannot decipher any growing weariness in her husband’s messy scrawl, if it is there. 

But war is war, and Anne prays.

(She does not pray for herself.)

**

Athos reports to the palace, four years and a day after they leave. Anne sees him, coming out of Treville’s office where she is sure the King is also seated, his pauldron marked with his captaincy and his skin looking more pale than fair. He freezes in the hallway when he sees her, but he bows a moment later, and his hesitation is forgotten. Anne cannot stop herself from smiling any more than she can stop herself from rushing down the hall towards him, her heavy skirts trailing behind her.

“Athos! It is so good to see you!”

“Your Majesty,” he murmurs, and despite it all, there is a slight curve to his lips. Anne clings to this curve, and the smile on her face threatens to hurt her cheeks. 

“Are you all back?” Anne asks, too much eagerness in her voice to conceal it all. She wonders briefly to whom she is referring. She does not give this thought away, though, but clasps her hands in front of her and tries to dim her smile into something smaller, and more manageable.

Athos makes a small sound that could be a scoff and shakes his head. His hair has grown longer, and it hangs around his chin now, barely groomed. It does not suit him, exactly, but he is here, and alive, and by God’s grace almost smiling at her, and Anne feels suddenly as though she might cry.

“No. I was summoned back to report – the regiment has been deployed to Alsace, and Treville wanted an update on our supplies.”

“Treville, but not the King,” says Anne, and is surprised by the bitterness of her own voice.

Athos raises his eyebrows slightly.

“The King was present during my report, your Majesty.” But his tone is careful. Anne purses her lips and nods, and then says,

“And Porthos? D’Artagnan? I trust they are – well?” Athos is silent for a moment, and Anne feels the irrational urge to reach out and grab his hands. But he is not Constance, and he hardly would appreciate such an act, Anne knows. “Constance has been receiving the letters from all of you,” she adds, the end of her sentence suddenly strained. “So I am well informed, you see.”

“And yet still you ask,” says Athos, a tired sort of amusement colouring his voice. Anne grips her own hands more tightly, and fights the urge to look away.

“I would like to hear it from your own lips, Captain,” she says. “To – to be certain.”

 _We are friends, after all_ , she wants to say. She wants to say many things, and ask many questions, but she keeps her mouth closed and watches him carefully.

“Forgive me, your Majesty,” says Athos finally, his voice still soft. “We are all as well as can be expected. And – we all hope that you and the Dauphin are well.”

His voice drops considerably in volume at the end, and Anne realizes that her nails are digging into her own skin.

_She should not ask –_

“And –”

Athos’s face is soft but his words what one might call stern, when he says,

“No word, your Majesty. But safe, as far as I know.”

“Yes,” says Anne. “Yes, of course. Thank you, Captain.”

“Your Majesty.”

He turns to leave, and Anne does reach out and grab his hand, revelling very slightly at the way his eyes widen and he nearly jumps, if her were the sort of person to jump. But then he softens, and gives her once more that amused curl of his mouth when she says,

“God be with you, Athos.”

“Thank you,” he says; there is a rasp to his voice, and something that she cannot discern flashing through his eyes. They are so very tired, suddenly, she thinks – so much more tired than before. “Your Majesty.”

Perhaps it is the tiredness, or perhaps it is simply Athos, but a bit of the warmth is gone, and Anne feels the dimmed ache in her chest renew.

She watches him go, and nearly gets walked into by Louis, who is emerging from Treville’s office and looking back in, Treville’s carefully controlled voice following him. Their arms collide, and Louis stumbles back, and Anne has a moment to watch the expression on his face flit from shock to outrage to – something.

“Oh,” he says, “it’s only you. Well, do be careful, Anne.” 

He leaves, the opposite direction that Athos did, and Anne is left standing alone in the hallway with no one but the ache and her heavy silks to accompany her. Constance cannot make it to the palace, that evening, and her son is busy with his governess, and Anne walks silently to her chambers and kneels by the bed, rosary in hand.

The edge of the carpet digs into her knees through her dress, and Anne cries.

**

She thinks that if she did not know what the word _friendship_ meant as a child, then perhaps she also did not know what _love_ meant. They two are words that are closely married, if not always in the same fashion. Some loves are different from others, and some friendships are different from others, and the two couple in an eternity of different ways.

This, Anne assumes, for she has not experienced all of them, though she has experienced many in the past five years. She goes to wake her son in the mornings and there is love in the giggles he gives when she tickles his ribs; she hugs Constance tightly when she visits the palace, a thick belt around her waist replacing the pretty frocks of before, bruises under her eyes from the Red Guard’s corruption; she misses the unique way d’Artagnan would grin at her before helping her in and out of carriages, and the great boom of Porthos’s laugh, and Athos’s quiet, solid, presence.

She sometimes dreams, of warm calloused hands and gentle, kind smiles and unruly hair under her fingers, and of the feeling of flying, and of being able to breathe. She chokes back the tightness in her throat and wonders at how she was always so worried that her friendships would be lost, because friendship and love are so closely married and she cannot, for the life of her, seem to give up this love.

Constance comes to visit, one day when she has planned to go out and play with little Louis in the gardens, and they sit together on the bench while Anne’s son runs around trailing peals of laughter behind him. 

“You look tired, my friend,” says Anne, presently, turning away from her son to look at Constance. Constance gives her a smile – one of those small, sad ones that she used to give so often, back when they had first left.

“The food shortage has set in,” she says, a heaviness to her shoulders. “Governor Feron seems determined to make sure those rumors come true. There’s people –” She shuts her eyes, briefly, and Anne feels something in her chest drop – “there’s _children_ starving on the streets, I can’t –”

Anne lets her hands cover Constance’s, as is their custom, and squeezes.

“I’m sorry, your Majesty,” says Constance presently.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” says Anne in a quiet voice. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”

“This isn’t _your_ fault.”

“But –”

“No,” says Constance, “it’s not. You’ve tried talking to the King, haven’t you?”

Anne looks back out to where her son is playing, squinting against the sun.

“I can do more.”

“You –”

“I _can_. I’ll speak with Minister Treville, and attend the council meeting next Tuesday. Perhaps I can reason with Governor Feron.”

Constance is silent for a moment.

“The courtiers …”

“Don’t like me, I am well aware,” says Anne, smiling tightly. Her chest is tight, and so are her hands around Constance’s, and everything seems tight, rather than how it _should_ be. Anne feels it is the greatest punishment in the world to know how something _should_ be, and exist in a place where it is _not_.

There _should_ be warmth in the quiet moments, she thinks, but instead there is poison, and crawling whispers and ice, moreso now than ever. Louis does nothing to stop them, less even than he did _before_ (and what a word that is). In her weakest moments, curled up in her bed in the silence of the night, Anne wonders if he does not actually encourage them.

“I’m sorry,” says Constance, in that unique, sincere way of hers, the one that seems to push warmth into things through sheer force of will. Anne’s hands relax. “You shouldn’t – I mean. I’m here, you know. I’m sorry I’ve not been around as much.”

“You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about, Constance,” says Anne, and turns to look at her. She wishes, suddenly, that they were not out in the gardens, such that one or both of them could rest their head upon the other’s shoulder. “Dear Constance,” says Anne instead. “Dear, stubborn, amazing Constance. I believe I might be lost already without you.”

Constance’s cheeks darken a bit, but her grip, in turn, becomes more firm. 

“And I you, your Majesty.” She takes a deep breath, and Anne watches her look out to where little Louis is now lying on his back in the grass, giggling and shaking his head while his governess tries to coax him into a more proper position. “I miss – I _miss_ –”

“I know,” Anne whispers.

“I didn’t think it’d be so difficult,” says Constance presently. “Or maybe – I _did_. But it never – I wanted so badly to feel as though I could just go on, and somehow the fact that they’re not here traipsing into my house all the time makes me feel like I’m floating.” She laughs, a self-deprecating, half-broken thing, and shakes her head. “But we’ll be alright.”

“I do not have nearly as much to miss as you, dear Constance.”

Anne swallows and watches as Constance straightens, and frowns, her skirts rustling against the bench upon which they’re sat, and perhaps it is this that marks a small shift in Anne’s heart.

“Don’t be silly,” Constance says, matter-of-factly. “Everyone is allowed to miss their friends.”

In the mornings and the evenings, Anne kneels at the foot of her bed like the did as a little girl, and prays. She prays for her son, and for Constance, and for France, and for Spain, and she prays for her friends. 

She prays for Aramis, because God knows what is in her heart even if she refuses to think it aloud, and she prays for herself, so that perhaps the ache might go away.

“Yes,” says Anne, smiling at Constance. Constance is her friend, but perhaps all of these words in Anne’s head have coupled together such that _sister_ is a more apt term. She does not say this out loud, but the dimples in Constance’s cheeks do. “Yes, I suppose you’re right, Constance.”

(She does not pray for the King.)

**Author's Note:**

> \- REALLY EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS SAD SO IDK WHAT TO SAY i've always been fascinated by the big 5-year gap between seasons two and three, because for anne and constance life must have sucked tremendously in the sense that it's always miserable when HALF THE SQUAD MOVES AWAY (i mean my personal experience has been in terms of "moves to the next city three hours over for university" and not "goes off to literal actually war and/or that monastery", SO I REALLY CANT CLAIM THAT THE FEELING IS ONE AND THE SAME, but i do think i know the Gist of it)
> 
> \- the line "the regiment as been deployed to Alsace" is admittedly me just looking up the thirty years war and plucking out the first Geographic Location on the wiki page so i ask for forgiveness about that here and now
> 
> \- i added the small bit about treville upon posting this here from tumblr bc i really think treville takes every opportunity to be captain dad, regardless of circumstantial constraints, like he is really always trying his utmost to Dad and i love that about him
> 
> \- thats all folks!!!! hope u enjoyed


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